THE RESORTS. 
59 
about our harbor ceased to furnish its scanty contin¬ 
gent of game. One of our huntsmen, Petersen, never 
very reliable in any thing, declared himself unfit for 
further duty. Hans was unsuccessful: he made seve¬ 
ral wide circuits, and saw deer twice; but once they 
were beyond range, and the next time his rifle missed 
fire. 
I tried the hunt for a long morning myself, without 
meeting a single thing of life, and was convinced, by 
the appearance of things on my return to the brig, that 
I should peril the morale , and with it the only hope, of 
my command by repeating the experiment. 
I labored, of course, with all the ingenuity of a well- 
taxed mind, to keep up the spirits of my comrades. I 
cooked for them all imaginable compounds of our un¬ 
varied diet-list, and brewed up flax-seed and lime- 
juice and quinine and willow-stems into an abomina¬ 
tion which was dignified as beer, and which some were 
persuaded for the time to believe such. But it was 
becoming more and more certain every hour, that 
unless we could renew our supplies of fresh meat, the 
days of the party were numbered. 
I spare myself, as well as the readers of this hastily- 
compiled volume, when I pass summarily over the de¬ 
tails of our condition at this time. 
I look back at it with recollections like those of a 
nightmare. Yet I was borne up wonderfully. I never 
doubted for an instant that the same Providence which 
had guarded us through the long darkness of winter 
was still watching over us for good, and that it was 
